Zebrafish Egg Infection Model for Studying Candida albicans Adhesion Factors

PLoS One. 2015 Nov 16;10(11):e0143048. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143048. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Disseminated candidiasis is associated with 30-40% mortality in severely immunocompromised patients. Among the causal agents, Candida albicans is the dominant one. Various animal models have been developed for investigating gene functions in C. albicans. Zebrafish injection models have increasingly been applied in elucidating C. albicans pathogenesis because of the conserved immunity, prolific fecundity of the zebrafish and the low costs of care systems. In this study, we established a simple, noninvasive zebrafish egg bath infection model, defined its optimal conditions, and evaluated the model with various C. albicans mutant strains. The deletion of SAP6 did not have significant effect on the virulence. By contrast, the deletion of BCR1, CPH1, EFG1, or TEC1 significantly reduced the virulence under current conditions. Furthermore, all embryos survived when co-incubated with bcr1/bcr1, cph1/cph1 efg1/efg1, efg1/efg1, or tec1/tec1 mutant cells. The results indicated that our novel zebrafish model is time-saving and cost effective.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biofilms
  • Candida albicans / physiology*
  • Candidiasis / microbiology*
  • Embryo, Nonmammalian / microbiology
  • Hyphae / physiology
  • Ovum / microbiology*
  • Tissue Culture Techniques
  • Zebrafish

Grants and funding

This work was supported in parts by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (99-2320-B-400-006-MY3 and 102-2311-B-400-001 to HJL, as well as 99-2320-B-009-001-MY3 and 102-2320-B-009-001 to YLY) and the National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan, (01A1-IV-PP09-014 and 02A1-IVPP08-014 to HJL). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.